'I Got It Wrong': Davies reflects on costly game plan at Torquay

Photo credit: Zak Rana

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Much like Baby’s father, Jake Houseman, in the classic 80s film Dirty Dancing, when Slough Town boss Scott Davies ‘gets something wrong, he says he’s wrong’.

And on Saturday afternoon, Davies and his backroom team opted for an attacking strategy against Torquay United at the Plainmoor Ground that badly backfired.

Having edged out Chippenham Town 3-2 in an entertaining, but very open game at Arbour Park a few days previously, the Rebels opted for a similar game plan against a Torquay side who came into the game off the back of some disappointing results.

Davies felt the Rebels had to go for it against one of the teams tipped for promotion this season, but in hindsight he reckons this was the wrong approach against a team he knew would be straining at the leash to impress after a couple of indifferent results against Hemel Hempstead Town and Hampton & Richmond Borough.

From the opening minutes they were put on the back foot in a frantic first half which saw the hosts rack up four goals to Slough’s two.

Jordan Young, Louis Dennis, a Johnny Goddard own goal and Cody Cooke all found the back of the net for the Gulls while Jared Myers - his first for the club - and Wiktor Makowski - his second in as many games - responded for the Rebels.

“On reflection I got it wrong if I’m honest,” Davies admitted this week. “I probably asked too much of the lads. We tried to make it a man for man game and when you’re playing a game of Torquay’s quality, you must be almost perfect in your performance to get a result. There were too many lads under par during the 90 minutes and ultimately that’s cost us. We probably needed to be a little more reserved and respectful, but we also wanted to go there and entertain. Maybe looking back, going there and setting up for a point would have been more of a shrewd idea.

“I think so, I think sometimes when you pay too much respect to teams, you end up coming unstuck. I think our best way to win a game of football is to be front foot and to try and attack teams. We always had in our mind that if we did beat Chippenham, going to Torquay we’d try to win it, rather than drawing two games.

“We wanted to give the best account of ourselves but for 35 minutes in the first half we were below par and should have done a lot better individually. It would have made us better collectively as well.

“Reiss Greenidge told us at half-time he was injured and couldn’t continue, so that was an enforced change. We just felt we needed to freshen it up, but to be honest with you, any one of us could have come off at half-time. It’s not that the guys who came off were any worse than the others, it was just bringing on players we felt would give us the best chance of getting into the game.”

In many ways though, Davies was more disappointed by his side’s ‘powderpuff’ approach to the second half. They might have been more reserved and a little more disciplined, but they offered virtually nothing in attack as Torquay comfortably held onto their two-goal lead.

“I was actually disappointed with our second half performance because although we passed the ball well, we never looked like scoring and it was really powder puff,” he said.

“We had a lot of the ball, but we didn’t use it well enough, and it became a bit of a non-event.

“I speak to their manager regularly and I knew they were going to be a caged animal. They’d had some disappointing results, and I knew he wanted a reaction from them because he told me. I knew it was either going to be boom or bust for them really. They were very good, and we caught them on a day when their manager told me it’s the best they’ve played this season. That meant we came out on the wrong end of the result and to many that’s no surprise because we were playing a massive football club. But we always go there with hope and a game plan to get something from it.”